Everything Horses and Livestock® Magazine February 2018 Vol 3 Issue 1

Everything Horses and Livestock Magazine ®

easy to see how when applying pressure it motivates the horse to move away first. We continue to apply pressure as this was the wrong answer, shortly the horse will move into the pressure (correct answer) and we stop/release the pressure (Atta boy, good job!) the faster we release pressure at the correct time the faster our horse learns the task at hand. Typically, we can teach a horse to come over to the mounting block in under 15 minutes. The same principle applies in all aspects of training. Teaching sliding stops, side passing, collection etc. all happens by applying pressure then releasing when the horse does the correct thing. The faster we release the faster our horse learns! Keep in mind we can just as quickly teach bad things by releasing at the wrong time. Often time’s people spend more time caring for their horse than actually riding them, feeding, mucking stalls or leading our horses to turn out, we are still teaching them. Every single time we are near our horse we are adding pressure/releasing pressure. If a horse crowds our space, do we make them move or do we move out of their way? While leading, do we have to drag them, or do we insist they walk softly at the position we asked them? Are we teaching them good things? Giving the Atta boy at the correct time? Maybe for a while every time we move out of our horse’ way or release the pressure we should say out loud “Good job, Atta boy!”. We may get some strange looks, but it would really

help us see that we are often releasing at the wrong time! The timing of our release is everything! Release is powerful! You and I can teach our horses anything desired when we focus on the release.

MATTHEW JOBE C BAR J RANCH WINDSOR, MO 660-537-9542 WWW.CBARJ.COM LIKE US ON FACEBOOK

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